Wipro CEO T K Kurien speaks during a press conference to announce the last quarter financial results of the company in Bengaluru on Wednesday.Photo by Shailendra BhojakBANGALORE: Everybody's talking disruption. If Infosys brought in a technology stalwart from the outside to try and do some disruptive innovation, cross-town rival Wipro's trying to learn the ropes internally.

The company's CEO TK Kurien, chief strategy officer Rishad Premji, and 30 senior leaders spent a few days recently in Singularity University, a teaching organization sponsored by Google, Nokia, Autodesk, Cisco and others in Silicon Valley to understand disruptions and the future of technology. The team is said to have delved into issues like artificial intelligence and machine learning, how these would complement human jobs, and how automation impacts IT services.

They were tutored by a distinguished faculty roster including Neil Jacobstein, co-chair of artificial intelligence robotics at Singularity University, who has served as a technical consultant on artificial intelligence research in firms like Boeing, Nasa and Defence Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA). Singularity has guest speakers including Babak Parviz, head of the Google Glass project, and Astro Teller, who is the head of Google X.

Wipro declined to comment on the visit.

"The Wipro team learnt about exponential technologies. In my discussions with T K Kurien and Rishad, I talked about the impact this will have on Indian IT. I told them that for the next 5-10 years, India will see a technology explosion that will make the US dotcom boom look lame. That the biggest opportunities are back home and that they should help fuel this with their investments," said Vivek Wadhwa, a distinguished fellow at Singularity University.

Singularity University encourages individuals to apply technology to address humanity's grand challenges in education, energy, food, health and water. Its executive programme is geared around six exponentially growing areas including biotechnology, artificial intelligence and neuroscience.

Earlier this year, the top brass of Tech Mahindra had attended a similar programme at Singularity University.

The $118-billion Indian IT sector is embracing newer technologies like cloud, mobility, internet of things (IoT) and analytics that are reshaping the software world and challenging traditional business models based on labour arbitrage. "Businesses today operate in a 'VUCA world' (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) where the danger of being disrupted or missing really big opportunities is a real and present danger. Nimble, forward looking leaders like Rishad are constantly seeking to leverage massive new trends and opportunities that are at least 3-5 years out. There's no better place than a think tank like Singularity to inject that fresh mindset and urgency into your team," said Ravi Gururaj, chairman of the Nasscom Product Council.

Mukund Mohan, director of Microsoft Ventures, said we are in a largely disruption and innovation led economy for a few years now and the pace is accelerating. "Most companies realize they cannot do this on their own, and startups are the key part of the ecosystem to scout for new ideas Singularity supports breakthrough innovation. Not the incremental type that you would find in most investment funded opportunities. I think they are unique and rare in the ecosystem," he said.

Wipro has created an independent business unit called Change the Business Services that will offer opportunities for employees to work like entrepreneurs and experiment with ideas in emerging areas like machine learning and platform-based services. The company has also been taking strategic equity stakes in startups involved in new technologies.